Modern businesses rely a lot on making effective communication with their potential customers, creating aesthetically pleasing visual tools are part of the strategy. With the average human attention span decreasing by a whopping 88% every year and more and more companies and products competing for market recognition online and offline, it is crucial to carve out a niche and create a unique identity for oneself.
In this complex framework of creating a brand identity, designing a perfect logo is the first step. Logo in today’s age is more than a symbol, it is an embodiment of what a company stands for—a visual ambassador for a brand. A good logo captures the attention of consumers, sends the right message to the target audience, and holds the power to convert people into loyal customers.
In this article, we wish to unpack a simple, straightforward, and highly effective logo design process geared toward creating logos for modern brands, a highly competitive market, and increasingly sophisticated consumers. We aim to present some useful logo design tips that can provide a framework for clients and designers alike.
But first!
Why Is Logo So Important For Branding?
As discussed a logo is only one of the many elements of branding, but it is also the only visual element that is most likely to appear on the majority of touchpoints with customers and other stakeholders, such as social media posts, website, brochures, products, packaging, ads, even uniforms, and stores.
Therefore, a logo can be considered as one of the main graphic elements that allow people to quickly identify an organization, its products, and services. And quite often, it will be the first thing people will use to identify you.
Here is why a well-designed logo is so important for branding purposes:
Identification: A well-designed logo allows people to identify and later recall your brand. One of the main points of identification for clients and stakeholders, it will help them to detect your brand across online and offline channels.
Consistency: In today’s world, businesses and organizations exist on various platforms, having a logo will allow you to appropriately represent your brand in a consistent way across all different communication channels.
Brand Identity: Logo is a part of brand identity and one of the main tools to graphically reflect your brand name, values, and personality.
Competition: In this oversaturated market a logo helps differentiate itself from the competition. The use of different colors, shapes, styles, and typographies is a great way to add personality through the product/service that might be similar.
Loyalty: Logo can facilitate an emotional connection with your stakeholders and boost brand loyalty. A good logo design will help recall happy memories of your organization.
Example - In 2010 when Gap decided to change its logo, many consumers were so disappointed and disassociated with the new logo design that the company chose to return to the original one.
Tips To Create An Effective Logo Design
While a logo is the face of the brand, the thought process that goes behind it is the key to developing an effective and creative design making it more than a symbol - an identity.
But what does this process look like? How does it unfold?
- Know The Brand
Before you set out to design your logo, gain some insight into the brand. A logo represents a brand and a brand wishes to reach a particular set of people, know the target market, customers, and demographic. A crucial element to designing a good logo is knowing the brand ideology and its aspiration for the future.
- First Impression Is The Last Impression
When designing a logo ask the hard questions ‘Does it successfully project your company’s personality amid its market and customers? Simple elements like colours and fonts used in a logo must align with the business you run and the products or services you deliver.
When you have aligned the logo with the brand identity, the next step is to make it catchy. To create an impression of your customers, make sure that your logo is simple yet unique, which means that the design must be developed from a new concept to stand out in the crowd of logos.
- Pick Your Colour Wisely
Choosing a colour is of paramount importance in branding. The success of any business depends on the colours you choose because it translates a message to your consumers. As a branding agency or a business owner, everyone must strive to send a distinctive message that sets you apart from other competitors. While doing this, you should also ensure that you are not losing the consistency between the colour and personality of the company.
Example- In the western culture, Black resembles sophistication, companies like Chanel, Apple, MAC Cosmetics, etc used the black colour scheme to impart sophistication and have a strong character, and trustworthy image, as represented by black as a brand colour.
- Typography Is Important
Sitting down to choose fonts in the face of important business decisions might seem like a waste of time but the typeface is more than fonts, it speaks about the personality of your brand. If done wrong the choice of typeface will send wrong signals to your potential customers leading to less or no conversions.
- When In Doubt KISS
Follow the K.I.S.S. (Keep it Simple, Stupid) rule right from the start of the design process, especially when you are brainstorming ideas and doodling sketches. The simpler the logo, the more recognizable it will be.
Tip: Work the design down to its essentials and leave out all unnecessary elements.
- Size Matters
A great logo design is easily legible and scalable in all sizes. It does not lose too much definition when scaled down for promotional items such as letterheads, envelopes, and visiting cards. And it also looks good scaled for larger formats, such as posters, billboards, and electronic formats such as TV and the Web.
Contrary to popular opinion, the smallest scale is usually the hardest to get right, hence the logo design must be kept simple and clean.
- Goal Is Recognition
The ultimate goal of creating a logo is to build brand recognition. The key to making a popular and recallable logo is to combine all of the elements: size, style, color, typography, and originality.
A quick tip to determine if your logo is recognizable enough is to invert the logo using and see if you can still recognize the brand. Additionally, you can also mirror the logo and see if it’s easily recognizable.
It is crucial to keep in mind that reality is always going to be different from the imagined scenarios, your logos may not always be seen as imagined in the real world (for example, on the side of a bus or a billboard that you drive by). Therefore, as a designer or branding agency always make sure to view your logo design from all possible angles and ensure that it’s recognizable from any direction before submitting it to your client.
Conclusion
Logo is the face of any brand and when executed correctly, it can become a powerful asset. To create a powerful logo design, make sure that you know the brand inside out. Along with the originality, it is crucial that the design stays simple, conveying a clear brand message.
Like any line of work, designing a perfect logo involves plenty of talent, practice and experience; If you wish to rebrand your own business whether it is logo redesign, a website redesign, refreshed messaging, or a complete brand makeover, it’s time you get in touch with professional branding agencies like Vowels to make your vision come true. We specializes in brand consultancy, strategy, brand guidelines, CI manual, brand presentation, and corporate branding.
Extended across multiple countries like the Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain, we believe in providing exclusive solutions to all your brand problems.
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